Edinburgh

Don’t let the blue skies fool you.  There was a very cold wind that chilled me to the bone, so windy and there was no wind when we left Perth!

Booked a seat at Scotland’s People to do more family history research.  They had less seats due to the socially distance rules so not only was this in force but the windows were open!  I don’t think I warmed up all day :).

Anyway, we got the tram in from the car park near the airport and while waiting looking wistfully at the planes taking off….. it felt like being back at work sitting at a desk and computer and with all my stuff round about including chocolate!

Lunch we went to the Bonnie and Wild food market to see what it was like.  There was a huge queue to get in but noticed someone going in the side door so just went in it bypassing the large queue, am not sure what it was for.  We decided to have the chicken place food and it was delicious.  Nothing like the grizzled fatty lumps of a KFC and there were some sort of crinkled, crisp like fries , also delicious.

Even managed to get a new zipper waist pack in the Nordic clothes shop, waterproof for the winter.

Sitting at my desk again in the afternoon I said to myself that I felt there were still some family secrets to unearth.  Half an hour later lo and behold I found something!!  In April 1923 there was a birth, in a street in Glasgow of a boy called Thomas Mullarky Cowper with my grandpa and grandmother (her of the many aliases) as the parents!  Given they only got married in January of that year, she registered the birth, (unusual for a married couple), and my mum had no siblings, I’m thinking the baby wasn’t my grandpa’s and she gave birth and then left the baby somewhere.  She was also only 20.  There was also a corrected entry on the birth certificate saying that he changed his name in 1967 (age 44) to Thomas Mullarky!  Weird!  And what kind of name is Mullarky anyway.  Could find no marriage or children for him but we found a death in 2006 in Manchester of a Thomas Mullarky.  Further delving when home found that the place where she gave birth was some sort of place for unmarried women in trouble .  We need to investigate further.  I asked mum if she ever knew of a Thomas but only of her Uncle, who she loved with for a couple of years while her dad found the housekeeper that the courts asked him to do before he could have his daughter live with him.  Given the way he searched for weeks to find his daughter and bring her back home when his wife left with her to join the travelling acting show, I feel it wasn’t his baby.  He would not have given him up.  I wish I knew the story!!  Jeez what tales there have been with Marie Findlay.

Toddled across the road the the Cafe Royale which was buzzing!  I had a lovely warm apple crumble and ice cream pudding  - delicious.  met a guy who told us about the best curry place in Edinburgh, best and cheapest.  

Tram back to car park and then the journey home which was in the dark, a sign of things to come.